5 Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid When Do-It-Yourself (DIY)

Doing your SEO work by yourself is perfectly okay, as long as you know you are on the right track.

Today we’ll cover a handful of SEO tips by showing you some of the more common mistakes DIYers do that are probably decreasing the amount of traffic you’re getting from Google. The following 5 SEO mistakes are preventing you from being placed at the top of search engine results. The best thing is, all of the tips in this post can be done on your own with a little patience and time.

1. Choosing the Wrong Keywords

Optimising is all about the keywords that you want your website to rank for. However, are you choosing the right ones?

One of the most common mistakes in choosing keywords is neglecting the preference of search engines and users for long-tail keywords. While you might define your products and services in a certain way, it’s more important to understand what words your potential customers would use to refer to them. Sometimes the terms you consider correct might mean something completely different for other people, or could be too generic. In either case, you will be optimising for all the wrong keywords.

It’s best to do your background research carefully before you start the optimisation. Using tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Google Trends, SEMrush and Moz Keyword Explorer can help immensely in putting your theory on practice on the pulse of trending and adequate keywords.

2. Lack of Content

What is a lack of content and how do you fix it? A lack of content refers to not having enough content for crawlers to realise what is actually on your page. As much as images and/or video are important to finalising a sale and triggering the shopper’s attention, those two types of media aren’t able to tell Google what is on the page or its quality. That’s where written content steps in, both on your category pages and product pages.

Regarding your images/photos, make sure that you’ve added ‘Alt Tags’. To give your page a shot at getting more traffic from Google (also the images search), you must use ‘alt text’ to describe, with the proper keywords, what the person will see.

3. Missing Quality Links

To get the best from SEO, content marketers today should grasp that the quality of external links included in content is more important than their quantity. That’s why it’s better to make sure you link to relevant, well-ranking websites with solid reputations – not just any site. It’s also useful to link back to sites that have linked to you, as this brings back traffic in the future.

Another counterproductive practice when it comes to links is using ineffective anchor text. This wastes precious SEO opportunities, as the anchor texts signify to the reader and to search bots what the link is about and how it can be beneficial to users. Thus, avoid using ‘click here’ as an anchor text and make sure you opt for a variety of anchor texts, as employing the same text over and over again can be seen as spammy.

4. Not Investing in a Fast and Mobile-Friendly Experience

SEO optimisation is not only about content and keywords. It’s also about the quality of your website, particularly its performance on mobile devices, which are users’ top choice today. Google and other search engines can recognise when your website is not mobile-friendly (think about the Mobilegeddon update).

If you haven’t considered a smooth mobile experience for your audience, your rating on search engines can be jeopardised. The same goes for load speed, as search engines put an emphasis on that as well. You shouldn’t be surprised if a slow website leads to lower SERP. You can use online tools like Pingdom and GT Metrix to analyse where the speed problems come from and how to fix them.

5. Forgetting About Analytics

Last but not least, the only way to know if your SEO optimisation and content efforts work is to track their progress. Many marketers would disregard the numbers, but this is a serious mistake. Setting up and regularly reviewing your analytics is essential for your optimisation results.

Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools are just two of the main tools you can use to measure and get an overview of your website’s performance. With their help, you can see how your optimisation is working for the different kinds of content and using various strategies you are trying out.

Search engine optimisation is an indispensable part of any content marketing strategy today. While you can find plenty of advice online, making a number of typical SEO mistakes is quite common. Instead, it’s better to get well acquainted with the challenges that others have experienced and avoid them in your marketing efforts.